Hearing on San Rafael soccer complex draws crowd

San Rafael officials will wait another two weeks to decide on a proposed soccer complex at San Rafael Airport after more than 150 supporters and opponents packed a City Council meeting Monday to debate the project.

San Rafael Airport LLC is proposing an 86,000-square-foot building with indoor soccer, other sports and a cafe selling beer and wine. The complex also would have two outdoor turf fields, one of them with lights.

The San Rafael Planning Commission voted 5-1 in June to recommend approval, with Commissioner Dan Sonnet dissenting, but decision-making authority rests with the City Council.

Supporters include several soccer leagues, the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce and Marin County Sheriff Bob Doyle. On Monday, they said the project would help ease a shortage of sports field space in Marin.

"We can't play lacrosse and soccer and baseball on trails," said Brian Lockwood, a longtime San Rafael resident who supports the project. "We need fields."

Opponents include neighbors and several environmental groups. They have long cited concerns about neighborhood impacts, harm to wildlife, flooding and safety risks.

Ulrike Steinbach, an opponent who lives near the airport, said the project would leave a poor environmental legacy for her 5-month-old daughter.

"When we talk about values and the legacy, I am here because I have to account to her one day and talk about what kind of environment I left for her," she said.

Before the public weighed in, city staffers and experts on wildlife and airport design spent more than two hours discussing some of the more controversial aspects of the project, including the potential impact on endangered birds and safety risks.

Jeff Monk, a biology consultant for the project, said he observed endangered clapper rail near the project but said the birds would not be harmed by the soccer complex. He said the birds have already adapted to people who walk their dogs along a nearby path.

Opponent Alan Scotch was not convinced.

"The clapper rail will not get acclimated to this noise and light," he said.

The City Council grilled an airport design expert about the risks of athletes being struck by planes. The expert, Maranda Thompson of the architecture and engineering firm Mead & Hunt, said there is some risk but plane crashes are unlikely in the area where the fields would be built.

"Ultimately the issue becomes one of weighing the aviation risks involve against the community benefits of having this facility," Thompson said.